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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Amanda Caswell

Forget chatbots: Why Apple, Meta and OpenAI are racing toward 'Spatial AI'

Robot.

When AI was first introduced, it came in the form of assistants like Siri and Alexa, then came chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini. Since then, we've seen agentic AI (AI agents) take over our computers and do the work for us. Now, big tech is racing towards a new type of AI that truly seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. At least until now.

It's called spatial AI and the biggest names in tech are already throwing billions of dollars at it.

Rather than simply generating text or images on a screen, spatial AI gives artificial intelligence something it has largely lacked until now: spatial awareness. Here's what you need to know about the next major shift — and why the battle lines are being drawn right now.

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